The chairman of a hotel workers union in southern California and Arizona says Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to large hotels “were never passed on to workers.”
Ada Briceño, the co-president of Unite Here Local 11, said on Hill.TV’s “Rising” Thursday that Despite hotels receiving PPP loans, members are “still being laid off” and 90 percent unemployed each year in the pandemic.
“This paycheck protection program should help workers, right?” She said. “You help small businesses and then the workers. And unfortunately that really didn’t happen. “
“It’s tough,” added Briceño, whose union represents more than 32,000 hotel workers. “”It’s really, really hard. So here we saw a great opportunity that didn’t end like this. You used it. They applied for these small business loans, these big hotel groups, but they never came down on the workers. “
Briceño said union members are mostly women and people of color who “are often the people caught between whether or not the next paycheck will leave them homeless”.
Unite Here Local 11 has previously reviewed PPP loans that required companies to keep their employees on payroll in order to minimize large layoffs during the pandemic.
The Western Union submitted Complained to the National Labor Relations Board last year to try to get a Santa Monica Marriott hotel to reveal how much loan money it received and how it was used Bloomberg News reported back then.
